Blog
Welcome!
Hello and welcome to the Foursight blog page! Each few weeks a different section of the Foursight team will contribute to the blog, taking in different points of view from across the company. There will be regular entries from the management and admin team, and the Artistic Directors as well as project-based entries from the Education and Outreach Officer.
To navigate, simply scroll down to read past entries, the most recent entry will always be at the top of the page. To return to the top of the page, simple click 'Return to Most Recent'.
And finally, should you crave even more up to date interaction with the company, do check out our Facebook page, where you will find photos, videos, chat and comment. 
Administrator Blog Entry - 19 December 2008
Hannah Nicklin - Merry Christmas!
Just a quick note from the whole of the Foursight team to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas and a brilliant New Year! Foursight go into rehearsal for our Spring 09 touring production on the 5th of January so we're going to be working very hard to bring you a brilliant new devised show. Do keep an eye on the tour details and book your tickets soon! In the meantime, we wish you a lovely holiday season.
Merry Christmas!
General Manager Blog Entry - 26 November 2008
Michelle Knight - CINARS performing arts exchange, Montreal
A week can seem like a very long time when you cram as much in as the CINARS 2008 schedule encouraged lucky delegates like me to do. I have just returned from a week in Canada where I attended this performing arts market and international exchange: a time for arts managers, artists, agents and producers from around the world to do business, network, share ideas, discuss the hot topics of the day, see theatre, and, quite frankly, do anything other than venture outside (temperatures of -11 ensured we remained very much indoors for as much of the week as possible!). Financial support from the UK government's Passport to Export scheme made my trip possible as I was there with a view to exploring potential opportunities for 'exporting' our theatre productions, particularly next year's touring production Can Any Mother Help Me?, on which we are collaborating with a couple of Canadian artists - a link which we hope might pave the way for a Canadian tour in the future.
However, I arrived in the very week that the newly elected Canadian government announced it would be withdrawing its support from the export of Canadian cultural activity, so, on top of the 40% cuts Canada's arts industry has recently received to its funding, the atmosphere veered between despondency and defiance.
Highlights included a workshop on performing in alternative spaces with panellists from Scandinavia and North America, a wacky Norwegian showcase performance about the shocking discovery of a teabag in a coffee-drinkers' club (all in a non-sensical hybrid language of course), 8am breakfast meetings on the performing arts markets of Brazil, Chile and Argentina (an area of the world I love), debating all things theatrical late into the night at the hotel bar, and the closing night party in Cirque Eloize's stunning rehearsal space. Despite the exhausting schedule - 8am til midnight each day for 7 days - it was a vibrant and interesting week, with many conversations lending the week an air of possibility and creativity. The standard of the theatre performances showcased was, in the main, disappointing, but, that apart, it was an invigorating week which I hope will lead to some exciting opportunities for Foursight in the future.
Our booth in the exhibition hall Closing night party
For a take on the CINARS event from a culture critic's point of view, check out Pat Donnelly's blog on The Montreal Gazette's website.
Co-Artistic Director Blog Entry - 3 November 2008
Frances Land - back down to reality
After the wonderful hive of activity throughout September and October rehearsing and performing The Corner Shop, it's now back to the grind of tidying up the mountain of loose ends and working with the Corner Shop steering group to support the next stages of the project, the archiving and touring exhibition.
The production itself continues to get fantastic feedback, we were lucky to have such a brilliant team of professionals and volunteers who pulled out all the stops to make it such a great success. The process of creating new work from recorded interviews is always exciting and challenging, at the start you have no idea what stories the process will uncover, what the common themes will be. And then once you have the stories, there is a weight of responsibility on you to try and create an engaging and interesting artistic piece in response that also honestly reflects the lives of the people interviewed.
We had fantastic feedback from our audiences, with many experiencing theatre for the first time, but for me a real highlight was the positive response of the shopkeepers, who, after seeing the production, expressed a clear recognition and sense of pride of their own stories within the piece.
So now, back to reality and the long list of those loose ends, oh and of course preparing for our next production Can Any Mother Help Me?, auditions tomorrow to find the last few members of our cast ready to start rehearsals at the beginning of January, brrrrr!
Education & Outreach Co-ordinato Blog entry - 1 October 2008
Lisa Harrison reflects on the recent The Corner Shop schools project:
This was a first for Foursight. An experiment, if you like. We wanted to see if we could apply in schools the same model we'd used in the highly successful productions Reans Girls and Apna Ghar, to create a mirror schools project to The Corner Shop that stood separate from the main production.
For a while we'd been aware that schools hadn't benefitted as much as we knew they could from our regional projects. Now was the time to take the risk! My first project as Education & Outreach Co-ordinator.
Would it work?
The project happened in two Black Country pirmary schools, with a year 5 and a year four class. Our starting point was the investigation of the live os those both in front of and behind the counter of small, family-run 'corner' shops.
Exploring, observing, listening, gathering
To prepare ourselves, we improved our listening and interviewing skills, learnt about how the high street used to be and about oral history from an archivist, and planned questions we wanted to ask when we met local shopkeepers and shoppers.
Then came the trip! We explored the local shopping area and returned to school laden with goods - exotic fruits and vegetables, beautiful fabrics, delicious Indian sweets, freshly-baked Polish bread, unusual objects. Many of these were given to us by the shopkeepers! "That would never happen in a supermarket", commented one of the children.
The following week the children rearranged the classroom to host a tea-party for local shopkeepers and shoppers. Food bought from the shops we'd visited was served. The guests were interviewed and their stories recorded. A wonderful exchange happened between the children and their guests.
Making, devising, shaping
The stories, images, shop items, high street sounds - everything we'd gathered so far - formed the stimuli from which to create our performance. A sound artist and a designer helped us in this part of the process. The children got to learn about soundwaves, record their own voices, work with banraku puppets, make and operate their own shadow puppets, as well as devise scenes in different spaces in the school inspired by the stories they'd heard.
A promenade performance, in four different spaces in each school, was created. To give you a flavour of the experience, the audience watched a shadow puppetry show, heard soundscapes created with the children's voices, listened to extracts from the recorded interviews, and tasted food from around the world - most of which was made by parents of the participating children.
Did it work? YES!
The most challenging, ambitious projects are often the most rewarding. This was undoubtedly one of those! There is still much to reflect on, not least how we take this strand of our work forward. What is now clear is that this model is entirely transferrable to schools.
The participating schools will attend a performance of the company's site-specific production in West Bromwich in October 2008. The material from the schools' work will be deposited in the Sandwell Borough archives.
For more information, student quotes, and images from the schools project, please click here .
Co-artistic Director Blog entry - 19 September 2008
Well, it's been a busy 2 and half weeks - a veritable hive of activity in our disused old shop in West Bromwich (I sense a running theme in my time so far as a Co-Artistic Director at Foursight...!) The Corner Shop rehearsals are well underway and we're now just starting to see all the seeds of the process come to fruition, the performers and directors have been working hard upstairs. Derek and Sheema (the musical directors) have been composing in one corner, and Rochi has been scripting in the other. All this accompanied by the drilling and banging of the ever-expanding design team, as they transform a previously empty shell into a theatrical labyrinth of shopping surprise! Every morning we arrive and it appears they have not gone home at all - another wall has gone up, a new floor has been laid, a new stack of food has appeared from more (extremely generous!) sources, and still they work on, the coffee supply diminishes, the drilling continues and the space we came to on day one becomes less and less recognisable... and more and more alluring!
As a researcher and performer on this show, it has been fascinating to listen to the memories of so many people from around the area where I grew up, and such an honour to slowly meld them into characters. Each of the cast is creating a character that inhabits a different time period from the last 40 years or so. My character - currently known as Pearl Parker - is the furthest back in time, coming to her shop in the early 60s. There are 5 actors altogether, as well as Kate Goodenough, who is on a volunteer placement with us. Tomorrow we will be joined by another group of volunteer performers who will slowly be rehearsed in over the next week, so by the time we open the cast will be pretty substantial. I have actually lost count of how many people are involved in this project, but it is great to be part of such a large team and it really is a rare opportunity to have the whole production team under the same roof from day one. It genuinely feels like a truly symbiotic process, with the devising, script, design and music being created day by day, influencing one other as we go.
There's only one more week to go now until the piece opens on the 26th of September, it's going to be so rewarding to see all of the hard work come together. So, tell everyone you know, and make sure you find your way to West Brom for what promises to be a spectacular experience!
(Call The Public 0121 533 7162 for more information and to book tickets)
Co-artistic Director Blog entry - 29 August 2008
The Corner Shop - August 08
Life at the moment is mainly taken up with preparations for The Corner Shop, our next site-specific production in the region. We go into rehearsals next week and are busy doing final bits and pieces before the team arrive on Monday morning.
The production team includes Purvin, heading up the design element (Apna Ghar , Reans Girls , Thatcher the Musical!); musicians/composers Derek Nisbet from Talking Birds & sitar player Sheema Mukherjee; writer Rochi Rampal; 5 professional actors including my co-director at Foursight, Sarah Thom; production manager Shona Wright, to keep us all in line, plus many other professionals, work placement students and volunteers who have been roped in - in all a team of at least 26 so far and growing.
The production will take place in a disused shop, part of The Queens Square complex at the back of The Public in West Bromwich. Our aim is to transform this rather dark and empty shell into a variety of different spaces reflecting the rich vein of corner shops in the region - taking our audience on a sensory journey as they experience some of the stories and characters our research has revealed.
Last week Steve Johnstone (Co-director for the production) and I spent the day with the designer and writer plotting out the different areas from a fantastical sweet shop to the private spaces we usually only ever glimpse at the back of the shop.
Today we have been going back over the interviews - I think there are about 30 so far, reminding ourselves of the many common themes, wonderful stories and characters, then extracting recorded sections that we will use as a starting point for the begining of the piece. The afternoon was back down to reality - cleaning toilets and hoovering the rehearsal space: ahh the glamour of theatre!
Anyway, to find out more you will have to come along to the production - the run starts at the end of the month. Also, if you want to find out where we will be come and visit The Public , who are supporting us by providing both Box Office and Front of House for the show. It's a rather funky new building in the centre of West Brom, with a great cafe and lots of free events at the moment.
To book tickets for The Corner Shop call The Public on 0121 533 7162
General Manager blog entry - 20 August 2008
Summer wouldn't be summer without the rain and Edinburgh, it seems, so I have recently paid my annual visit to what this year was a very persistently sodden Edinburgh for the fringe theatre festival. It is a great point in the theatre calendar, and being able to be there this year without the necessary evils that come with producing a show at the festival meant I could see lots of fantastic work - and some less than fantastic stuff too, it has to be said - and soak up the inspiring buzz of theatre-making, with none of the stress and bother of having to flyer the Royal Mile for every second of every rain-drenched hour. A great luxury.
I managed to see some wonderful theatre, although I was sad that one of my favourite venues, the Aurora Nova (home of interesting, adventurous, international physical theatre and dance), wasn't operating this year due to lack of funds. Fingers crossed for its speedy return to health for next year's fringe.
The Traverse , as ever, plays host to some stirring and challenging drama, and I have to give a plug to some 'must-sees':
'Fall' , by Zinnie Harris (a Traverse Theatre production in association with the RSC) is superb - if it tours, beg, borrow or steal a ticket! A stark production that interrogates the thorny subject of how a ravaged (anonymous) country justly punishes its war criminals. The political becomes personal when a member of the public is landed with the job of deciding whether or not the war criminals should be executed...having just found out that her recently deceased husband was one of them. Visually impressive, utterly absorbing, gritty, gripping and moving.
'The New Electric Ballroom ' by Enda Walsh (Druid), also at the Traverse, is well worth getting to see: slightly surreal, with typically brilliant, hypnotic
wordsmithery from Walsh, it's a quirky and off-the-wall examination of small-town life, nostalgia, and fear, but the main reason to see it is to hear Walsh's delight in and extraordinary manipulation of language.
As Foursight gear up for our next site-specific production this autumn (taking place in the shell of a disused shop), I was intrigued to hear of a show taking place in a caravan. As a former resident of Tewkesbury, I was also interested to hear that 'The Caravan ' (at The Pleasance Courtyard, produced by Look Left Look Right) told the story of the victims of last summer's UK floods, 2000 of whom are apparently still living in caravans outside their flood-damaged homes. Water-wrecked lives of Tewkesbury residents certainly featured, but the geographical focus was wide: characters from Yorkshire, Oxfordshire and Lancashire also had starring roles, one of whom even offered the audience - all 6 of us - a cup of tea and a biscuit. Well balanced, beautifully naturalistic verbatim theatre.
So, back at my desk until next year, and on with our own theatre making!
Michelle (General Manager)
Admin blog entry - Friday 08 August 2008
Hello there, and welcome to the admin corner of the Foursight blog! Now I'm sure you may be thinking ‘what on earth is there to blog about Admin?' but let me assure you that working the administrator post with Foursight is a varied and wonderful one, taking in many different areas and activities (though rest assured that I won't bore you with details of databases and fax machines). Also, after this post, the admin posts will be combined with a more general management-view company blog as well, meaning that you will be able to get an up-to-date picture of what's going on in the day-to-day running of Foursight.
So to pick a few main things from the past week or so...
Website:
The main task from the admin side of things at the moment is bringing the website entirely up to date. The new site is a triumph in terms of design and most of its content, however there are bits and bobs that need tweaking. The final idea is that the website will be your first stop for anything Foursight, for volunteer and work experience opportunities, casting calls, production information and news. Likewise we really want it to be an excellent resource in research terms - and this involves diving into the company records to make sure that the past production section is fully fleshed out with pictures, credits, reviews and summaries. This is an on-going process and bit by bit the pieces (now arranged in chronological order!) are being assembled, please bear with us during this process!
Corner Shop:
In terms of the wider-company, the marketing drive for The Corner Shop is in full swing, and I was out in Smethwick, Wolverhampton and West Bromwich yesterday with photographer Anand Chhanbra. We visited several of the shops which provided interviews for the research process to take portraits and images of the corner shops themselves. The shops were wonderfully diverse, taking in owners and produce from all over the world. And as well as contributing to the final piece and marketing material, these photographs - along with the interview material - are an important record of an industry increasingly threatened by supermarket commerce.
Archiving:
Frances Land and I attended a meeting with David Bishop at the Wolverhampton Archives on Wednesday. This was an exciting and very valuable chance to talk about both the role of our community-based work in recording oral history, and the archiving of Foursight' work itself. Foursight has been based in Wolverhampton for over 21 years, and is passionate about and proud of its being part of the region, and we feel that it is important to acknowledge our roots in the Black Country. This meeting will hopefully lead to a fully accessible archive of information on Foursight, as well as a very valuable chance to play a part in lodging the history of others.
Thank you very much for reading this first blog entry, and do stay tuned as in the next couple of weeks we should have an entry from one of the artistic team.
Hannah (Administrator)